Children's Safety and Violent Crime Reduction Act of 2006

CHILDREN'S SAFETY AND VIOLENT CRIME REDUCTION ACT OF 2006 -- (Senate - July 20, 2006)

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I too rise to support the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006. This act represents landmark, bipartisan legislation to protect the most vulnerable among us: our children. Over the last several months, the House and the Senate met, negotiated, and finally reached agreement on this important measure.

I want to note and, in doing so, commend the tremendous leadership Chairman Specter and Senator Hatch, our immediate past chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and their respective staffs, as well as the House Judiciary Committee chairman, JIM SENSENBRENNER and his staff, for all their tireless dedication to this legislation. Many people have devoted time and effort to see this bill through, ensuring that we do everything within our power to protect our children.

The crimes of child abuse and child exploitation are astounding but, unfortunately, all too prevalent. The recent wave of child abductions in this country demonstrates the need for this type of response from the Congress. There is only one way to deal with those who prey on children: They must be caught sooner, punished longer, and watched closer than they are today.

Before I came to the Senate, I was honored to serve as the chief law enforcement officer of the State of Texas as Texas attorney general. There, I instituted a new specialized unit known as the Texas Internet Bureau which was designed to coordinate and direct efforts to fight Internet crimes such as fraud, child pornography, and address privacy concerns, among others. As others here have noted, the Internet is a remarkable tool which has revolutionized the way we live, the way we communicate, and the way we receive information. The problem is, though, there is a dark underbelly to the Internet, and the Texas Internet Bureau was designed to specifically identify Internet predators who were then caught, prosecuted, convicted, and taken off the streets. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to work with my colleagues in the Senate to help continue on this important initiative and to make it available to more and more of our children and, thus, to make America a safer place for our children to grow up.

I want to take a moment to highlight another very important participant in these negotiations who has been noted and praised for his efforts, but I think we can't say enough to recognize his contribution. John Walsh has a long-standing commitment to fighting for child victims and measures to protect children across this country. As has been recounted, his son Adam Walsh was kidnapped from a mall in Florida and murdered in 1981. Since that day, John Walsh has dedicated his life to helping victims of crime, and he has been enormously successful and influential in doing so. It is only appropriate that this bill honors the inspiration he has given to us all in the life of his son Adam Walsh in the process.

As many of you know, John Walsh is the host of ``America's Most Wanted'' and has spent a lot of time and effort working on this bill. This is not the first time he has invested his efforts and expertise in helping Congress address child crime legislation. In the previous Congress, we passed legislation that included the Code Adam Act, which required Federal buildings to establish procedures for locating a child who is missing in Federal buildings.

The title of this current bill appropriately honors Mr. Walsh's efforts, and I am told the President will sign the bill, if we pass it, on July 27, marking the 25th year since the day Adam was abducted.

I do not pretend to understand the pain and trauma the Walsh family or others have had to endure as a result of these terrible crimes against children. But I am eternally grateful for the way John Walsh has used this pain and this trauma to improve the lives of other people and to ensure we take every step within our power to protect our children against like crimes committed against Adam Walsh.

I wish to take a second to highlight other important measures contained in the bill which will enhance existing laws, enhance investigative tools, criminal penalties, and child crime resources in a variety of ways. This bill requires sex offenders to register and, in the case of the most serious offenders, to do so for up to the length of their entire lives. It requires them to report in person at least once each year to update personal information and to take a new photograph. It requires public posting for public access on the Internet of information about sex offenders so it is widely available, and so parents can take steps necessary to protect their children. It forces States to comply with this program or, I should say, persuades them to comply with the program by linking participation to Byrne grant funding, and it punishes with imprisonment up to 10 years those who fail to register, and if they commit a violent crime while unregistered, they can be punished for up to 30 years consecutive to any underlying conviction. It requires the Attorney General of the United States to create Project Safe Childhood, which will integrate Federal, State, and local efforts to prosecute the crime of child exploitation. It increases punishments for any crime of violence against a child, and authorizes grants to States to implement these important programs, and provides them grants to do so.

It also includes many of the provisions of the Internet Safety Act which I cosponsored with Senator JON KYL and others which, among other things, creates a new crime outlawing child exploitation enterprises, and would imprison for a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years those who act in concert to commit at least three separate violations of Federal child pornography, sex trafficking, or sexual abuse laws against multiple child victims.

It also enacts various other important provisions, including making the failure to register as a sex offender a deportable offense for aliens and preventing sex offenders from taking advantage of our immigration laws.

This is one of those fine times in the U.S. Congress where we have come together on a bipartisan basis to do something that rises above partisanship and is enormously significant in terms of improving our quality of life and protecting those who are most vulnerable among us. This Congress continues to act on measures that benefit our Nation and protect our children. It has long been said that societies are ultimately judged on how they treat their elderly and their young. This bill is an important step toward improving the safety of those who are our youngest and most vulnerable.

Finally, Mr. President, I would like to specifically express my gratitude to the many dedicated staff who worked tirelessly on this bill for some time, including Matthew Johnson and Lynden Melmed from my own staff. Additionally, I would like to thank the following staff:

Allen Hicks, Mike O'Neill, Matt Miner, Todd Braunstein, Brett Tolman, Lisa Owings, Bruce Artim, Ken Valentine, Tom Jipping, Dave Turk, Bradley Hayes, Joe Matal, Nicole Gustafson, James Galyean, Amy Blankenship, Jane Treat, Sharon Beth Kristal, Julie Katzman, Noah Bookbinder, Christine Leonard, Lara Flint, Marianne Upton, Preet Baharara, Melanie Looney, Anna Mitchell, Gabriel Adler, Alea Brown, Bradley Schreiber, Mike Volkov, Sean McLaughlin, Bobby Vassar, and Greg Barnes.

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